Question: is there a dafter church than the Anglican Church of Canada?
Answer: you bet – it’s the United Church of Canada.
In many ways, the United Church has paved the way for Anglicans: it has pioneered absurd political correctness by expunging “Father” from it’s hymnbooks, embraced gayness with the enthusiasm of a bear finding a jar of honey, and championed every potty left-wing ignis fatuus known to man.
And now, out of the plethora of demonically evil nations to select from, it has, instead, chosen Israel for special approbation while ignoring models of utopian harmony such as Iran and North Korea.
The United Church of Canada is back in the news this week for having its head trapped in its fundament, as attendees of its upcoming general council will be asked to vote on a resolution boycotting Israeli academic and cultural institutions for tiresomely familiar reasons. The language of the resolution suggests that Israel stands out amongst the nations of the world as a uniquely horrible monster: it is said to operate what is described as a “regime of exclusion, violence and dehumanization directed against Palestinians.”
As if there weren’t 50 other boycottable countries that routinely and intentionally inflict these things on their citizens in a wholly undifferentiated way, without the mitigating features of Israeli rule — democratic checks and balances, a code and ethos of individual rights, rules of engagement for the military and the police, a free press, economic freedom and an independent judiciary.
It looks like Fred Hiltz has some catching up to do.
While I agree that there are other nations that have terrible human rights records, Israel IS carrying out a series of violent, and sometimes deadly, attacks on an entire group of people within its borders. Creating ghettos, razing homes, terrorizing families, erecting “walls” – doesn’t this all sound horribly familiar? And isn’t it all the worse for being God’s Chosen People who are committing these atrocities – when they above all others, should know far better?
Every church in North America, not just the United Church, should be condemning Israel’s actions, and calling for repentence and humility on the part of the leadership, political and spiritual, in that country.
(As a side note, a friend of mine who is a missionary in Yemen mentioned this morning that Israel’s ruthless methods are the single biggest barrier to Muslims converting to Christianity.)
In recent years it has begun to dawn on me that organizations such as the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada really don’t want to be Christians promoting Christianity anymore. What they are each truly keen on is in being an erzatz political party — strongly Leftist — promoting politically correct social activism, pretending it was this approach that was handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai. God and all those traditional religious trappings are so passe…..